Birth story: A home birth in a tub

by
Roberta

Meeting Beck

Beck was born about an hour and 20 minutes after I started pushing. His head appeared and then the rest of him slid right out. Kathryn grabbed him, I leaned back right away, and they brought him up and put him on my chest. Kathryn aspirated his nose and mouth and did the Apgar test. He got nine at one minute and nine at five minutes. His fingers and feet were blue, but otherwise he was very alert.

I hadn't known the sex, but everybody was convinced I was having a girl. I had had a dream that I was having a girl, Mike had had a dream I was having a girl. My sister when I was in labor said, "I'm feeling girl here! I think it's going to be a girl!" And all my friends said it was going to be a girl. But when they gave him to me, I looked down and said, "It's a boy!"

My sister snapped a picture, which we have, and Mike and I just look terrified. I'm holding the baby in the tub with this look on my face, and he has this look on his face. It wasn't like I looked at the baby and went "Awwwww," like everybody says; I was totally freaked out.

Kathryn waited until the umbilical cord stopped pulsing, then she clamped it and Mike cut it. Then he held the baby — which I wasn't even aware of at the time, he told me days later — while my sister and the midwife had me stand up and deliver the placenta. And once that was done it was just like "Ahhhhhhh," a huge relief.

Postpartum recovery

They helped me get out of the tub, and I went to the bathroom to clean up a bit. Then they helped me walk to the bedroom, which felt like the longest walk ever, I was so exhausted. I climbed into bed and Kathryn checked me out to make sure that everything was okay. I had only a tiny tear, less than a centimeter, which was amazing because Beck was 8 pounds. She examined the placenta. Because the birth was so fast, she wanted to make sure that it was all there. She was showing us, but I didn't have my glasses on so I couldn't really see.

I was bleeding really badly, so she gave me a shot of Pitocin and we tried to nurse Beck right away to stop the bleeding. She ended up leaving a couple of pills with me for the bleeding. She said that I was just on the cusp of being okay and she didn't want to take any chances.

It's funny how people tell you to have this or that, and then everything just kind of goes out the window. It happened so fast. The whole thing start to finish lasted just over six hours.

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